Synopsis Written in 1896 this is a comic play of aspiration and failure. Nina aspires to be an actress, Kostya a writer. Madame Arkadina and Trigorin are already these things. Can the young people's dreams come true or will they sour when confronted with the adult world?
At the National Theatre last night (27 June 2006, previews from 17 June), Katie Mitchell’s production of Chekhov’s The Seagull opened in the NT Lyttelton, where she had a critical hit on the same stage with Chekhov’s Three Sisters in 2003.
The majority of overnight critics thought the Chekhov classic was too scaled down to promote any connection with or sympathy for the characters, and didn’t care for the theoretical treatment of the text. However, one reviewer said Mitchell’s production found “an ardency, an urgency and a clarity that's all too often missing in dustier, more respectful versions.”
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com - “The preparations for Konstantin’s play include a laborious tuning of the piano. Stagehands dash about everywhere. In the play proper (Chekhov’s, not Konstantin’s), no one dares raise his or her voice in truth or anger for fear of being overheard. The result is a performance that is entirely submerged in its self-conscious reverie. The characters are more remote than immediate… The Seagull simply doesn’t work as a theoretical exercise. Unless we believe in the crisis of Konstantin’s artistic ambitions, we are bound to lose interest… The idea is to give us a ‘backstage’ version of the play stripped of its veneer and atmosphere. This is to eject baby with bathwater, I’m afraid, and the overall acting is not so much drained of colour as totally devoid of it.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard - De Jongh was unimpressed with “Crimp's cut or rather truncated, maimed and technically inept version of Chekhov's early masterpiece”. As for the performances: “Juliet Stevenson's mildly amusing Arkadina, that once-famous actress, whose career is left dangling at the end of second-string touring dates, scales the heights of egotistical petulance as she flatters Mark Bazeley's unduly boring Trigorin into sexual submission. Sadly Miss Stevenson never suggests there may be more to Arkadina than shallowness… Ben Whishaw makes a wilfully cool and composed Konstantin… He no more matures or changes than does Hattie Morahan’s dazzled but insufficiently harrowed Nina. Only Arkadina's decrepit brother, Gawn Grainger's Sorin, rings the bell of Chekhovian conviction... Anyone who comes fresh to the play should be warned they are not seeing some radical reinterpretation, but a pallid version of the real thing.” Despite his grievances, De Jongh maintained faith in the director: “Mitchell's Seagull does, though, generate an intriguing, desolate atmosphere… Mitchell is too fine a director altogether to fail Chekhov. Adrift in vast, decayed, dusky spaces, her actors do still capture that Chekhovian sense of people lost in private, lonesome reveries.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian - “With mise en scène being substituted for meaning, the sound you hear all evening is of baby being ejected with bathwater… here theatrical effect takes precedence over everything. Konstantin's play, which his mother so rudely interrupts, may be bad but it is about something interesting: the conflict between spirit and matter. Here, however, with Nina whispering her words into a microphone, it is virtually inaudible. And the great scene where Trigorin seduces Nina with his profession of literary inadequacy is shifted from outdoors to indoors and interrupted every few seconds by banging doors and scurrying servants. As a result, you lose any sense of his frayed charisma or her star-struck naivete… A few good things survive. Juliet Stevenson's Arkadina is richly condescending towards Nina…. Sandy McDade's Masha is full of lovelorn desperation… And Gawn Grainger conveys Sorin's anger at his sense of unfulfilment.” Nevertheless, decided Billington, this Seagull “is director's theatre at its most indulgent, in which the play, as Chekhov wrote it, is definitely not the thing.”
Dominic Cavendish in the Daily Telegraph - Running counter to his peers, Cavendish was thoroughly won over by Mitchell’s interpretation. “Purists will no doubt flock to grumble at the liberties she (Mitchell) and adaptor Martin Crimp have taken, but if you can forgive it the occasional overeager excess, their combined effort gives the play an ardency, an urgency and a clarity that's all too often missing in dustier, more respectful versions… Mitchell is the high priestess of fluttering neurosis and ill-suppressed hysteria… There are irritations - the needless alteration of the final lines being the worst offender. But you're left persuaded that, ostentatious though Mitchell's signature is as a director, it always serves to underwrite the genius of Chekhov.”
The photograph in the programme of The Seagull shows Juliet Stevenson as Arkadina sitting determinedly at a grand piano next to her son, Ben Whishaw’s bendy-limbed Konstantin, who is lost in thought. A blurred image of Hattie Morahan as Nina gazes out of a window.
Shadows and ghosts, the other life of an afterlife: such is the mood of Katie Mitchell’s hauntingly perverse Chekhov, in a stark new version by Martin Crimp “based on a literal translation and critical commentary by Helen Rappaport”. The preparations for Konstantin’s play include a laborious tuning of the piano. Stagehands dash about everywhere. In the play proper (Chekhov’s, not Konstantin’s), no one dares raise his or her voice in truth or anger for fear of being overheard.
The result is a performance that is entirely submerged in its self-conscious reverie. The characters are more remote than immediate, and it's indicative of how an attitude towards the play has overtaken an engagement with it that the most striking sequence is that of a trance-like company tango to the distant music wafting across the lake. Significantly, the actors are recalling how once they danced, not dancing in the present tense.
Mitchell has done wonderful work on Chekhov before, notably her Uncle Vanya at the Young Vic, where the reality of torpor was excruciating to the point of embarrassment. But The Seagull simply doesn’t work as a theoretical exercise. Unless we believe in the crisis of Konstantin’s artistic ambitions, we are bound to lose interest.
Many years ago, director Philip Prowse shifted the emphasis to Nina’s ruination by placing the interval after the third act, marking the two-year time gap between her flight with Trigorin and the consequences of her disastrous metropolitan adventure. Mitchell follows suit, but without any comparable effect. Konstantin’s doodling at the keyboard has matured into a poignant Chopin recital while Nina has become unrecognisably hysterical.
In turning the play around on its axis – in Act One, we are at the back of the house, and this dining room, designed by Vicki Mortimer, serves also for Chekhov’s second act “croquet lawn” – Crimp and Mitchell might have been expected to zoom in on Konstantin’s suicide. But while they diffuse the terror and ambiguity of the final moments – we see Whishaw burning Konstantin’s play as if it was literally pestilential – the conventional dramaturgy remains intact.
The idea is to give us a “backstage” version of the play stripped of its veneer and atmosphere. This is to eject baby with bathwater, I’m afraid, and the overall acting is not so much drained of colour as totally devoid of it. Juliet Stevenson is neither sacred nor monstrous as Arkadina, an infuriatingly colourless performance that is not flattered in the shadowy silhouette of Chris Davey’s lighting design. Mark Bazeley is an equally anonymous Trigorin. Gawn Grainger mutters away disconsolately as the wheelchair-bound landowner Sorin. Only Sandy McDade defies the reverential gloom by spicing up her miserable Masha with some well-directed poisoned darts.
This play had me enthralled and often of the edge of my seat. Chekov has a reputation of being heavy-going and difficult to watch, however in this version I truly felt I could identify with many of the (beautifully flawed) characters. The story was told with a strong sense of reality, this added sense of voyuerism, heightened the sordidness of twisted little relationships - like watching your neighbours fight from behind the curtains.
I have never seen this play performed before so I can't know how it is 'supposed' to go; but I can say that this play was wonderful piece of theatre in its own right and should be judged on its own merit. - 87.74.34.117)
11 Sep 06
Where on earth did this director get her 'reputation' from? And why does the National keep employing her to cut up the classics with productions like this? The whole ghastly thing reeks of sixth form earnestness. Where is the lightness of touch that made Chekhov call this a comedy? The only real insight on offer here is that Katie Mitchell is not what so many critics (OK, I mean the headbanging Guardian and Independent critics) have been making her out to be all these years. Tripe from start to finish. - 217.196.231.33)
09 Aug 06
I rather enjoyed this production - the set and design is superb and the sense of evesdropping on a family in crisis is deeply moving and troubling. I had no problems with hearing, as other reviewers have noted, so either this has been improved or I benefited from being a tightwad and sitting in the cheap seats close to the stage. The acting is first rate - very naturalistic and real. Only Sandy McDade didn't really work for me, but then she was the only one praised in the WOS review! I agree that the changed ending is less effective than the original but that apart, I thought it was a less stylised Chekhov than is usually seen and it was closer in spirit to the excellent Maly Theatre's Vanya last year - and there can be no higher praise in my book than that. After all, if Maly don't know how to do the Russian greats, then no one does. I found it moving and intense - which is what I want from my Chekhov. - 82.2.87.180)
07 Aug 06
Dear, dear, dear. The appointment of Nick Hytner as director of the National was one of the greatest things to happen to the theatre capital. He is one of the bravest artistic directors to have come along in recent years. The work he comissions is not safe, it is edgy, has risks, bold, sometimes they dont work most of the time they do. People need to live in the twenty first century Hytner is championing the new theatre wave. This production was one of those triumphs, I believe Katie Mitchell and her work is the closest thing we have in this country to what Checkhov intended. This production is totally natural, I felt like I was evesdropping on a family's life, Mitchell brings in ingenious ideas such as having a party still going on through the window. The actors were totally lost inside the world of their characters, they had lost themselves for three hours, a rare thing to see on the British stage. I loved the translation, it was modern and took risks. I have performed Checkhov before and what Crimp has done is to change the language to something that will enable modern actors to feel completely comfortable, the only quirp I have is his changing of the end. Normally Dorn takes Trigorin to the side and tells only him of konstantin's suicide. I disliked the way Crimp has changed it to Dorn loudly exclaiming this fact to everyone, the transition makes no sense. Aside from that the ensemble is first class, another hit for the National, currently Britains greatest power house of theatrical merit. - 80.225.173.14)
26 Jul 06
I give this production a three for the set and the staging which are amazing. Can't comment on the acting, as the lighting is so dark it was impossible to see any faces! A shame as it could have been so good. - 62.252.64.30)
23 Jul 06
I really enjoyed this director's 'A Dream Play'. I don't really like Chekov - it seems to me nothing ever happens. So, I was expecting to enjoy this 'de-construction'. I'm afraid I found it arrogant (it's not really The Seagull), pompous (as an interpretation of Not-The-Seagull) and completely irritating (more racing around and door-slamming that a brace of farces). Beware - it's 100 minutes to the interval ! - 86.130.219.140)
13 Jul 06
This was my first experience of The Seagull but even I could tell that this is a bizarre production. The relationships between the characters are unclear, some of the casting is daft (Sandy McDade is a fine actress but she cannot pass for 22) and the apparently changed ending is a dreadful let-down. Sadly much of the acting is also sub-standard, particularly Juliet Stevenson who fails to convey any believable emotion and must have been barely audible from any further than ten rows back. Finally the scenes with more door slamming than a Whitehall farce quickly became distracting and tiresome. After a series of exceptional revivals at the Lyttelton this is a major disappointment. - 62.6.139.13)
05 Jul 06
I must agree with ** 28th June I too was very disappointed at this production of The Seagull. At one point I would not have been at all surprised if a Brian Rix character had come running through one of the constantly opening and closing doors with his trousers around his ankles. Actually it might have helped this troubled production if he'd done so.
I am not averse to trying new ideas with old plays. The RSC have done brilliant things with Shakespeare over the years. But not the NT with Chekov in this case.
Unfortunately this isn't, for me anyway, the one duff show in the Nationals calender for the year. Once in a Life Time failed miserably as did Trevor Nunn's Royal Hunt of the Sun - directed by the great man as if it were a musical!
I think the wonderful Nick Hytner, who has no doubt been side-tracked by the terrific success of The History Boys in NYC, has taken his hands of the rudder. He needs to get the company back on course and soon.
By the way the set was brilliant - so ***** and well done to the National's chippys.
- 195.93.21.129)
05 Jul 06
intense and beautiful. fine fine acting and direction. but you must sit as close as possible as the lighting is very dark. - 86.136.82.162)
28 Jun 06
I was astonished by this pared down version. It was almost dumbed down. The relationships between Masha and her husband and between her mother, father and the doctor were all suppressed in favour of the mother/son dynamics between Arkadina and Konstantin played by wimpy Whishaw. The anacronistic in reverse effects of plastic, high heels and tangoing I found aggravating. I rather puritanically feel that Chekhov should not be updated. It is all about the context of pre revolutionary Russia not 1930s nowhere. The most annoying thing, however, was that we could not hear any of the cast apart from Juliet Stevenson which had everyone around us asking what was going on. I understand they have ironed out a lot of the problems but overall it was a very disappointing performance and the ending was absurd. Chekhov wrote it as a comedy and I think this was quite lost. A shame, because it seems the Director is so well respected. The impact of the seagull itself was lost as we couldn't see it at the end. The constant motion was an odd way to represent the inertia of the provincial characters. If you do not already know the play you will miss out on an enormous amount of what Chekhov is trying to tell us and if you do know the play, you will be very grumpy by the end. I couldn't help thinking that Juliet Stevenson's roar at the end of the play (not in the original version) was more relief that she could go home. - 62.31.209.47)
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